


The Waiting

by StarlightDreamer16



Series: Spider Silk [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Archivist Jonathan Sims, Canon Asexual Character, Escalation of Jon's power timeline, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Secret Relationship, Spoilers for S4, Spoilers for all the other seasons too, The character death is canon stuff, Web Martin Blackwood, canon typical worms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23375476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightDreamer16/pseuds/StarlightDreamer16
Summary: Jon’s voice was quiet, settling under his skin rather than bouncing across the room. “I don’t want to die. Not like this.”“You won’t.”Five times Martin needed Jon to be okay + One time Jon needed Martin to be okay.ReadThe Weavingfirst for context.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: Spider Silk [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1674379
Comments: 113
Kudos: 367





	1. The Infestation

Martin refused to look away as Sasha dug the worm out of Jon’s skin, its pulpy body mixed with blood as the corkscrew burrowed through flesh. He caught Jon’s eyes and felt his own mirrored fear festering beneath his skin, like his body was being drilled into as well.

Martin was a planner; all through high school he’d kept pristine daily planners, colour-coded by subject and event. When his mother had gotten sick the content had shifted from science tests and drive-in movies to medical appointments and bill due dates, but he’d never stopped the habit of keeping things organised.

Prentiss had been on his radar for months before the first worm had been smashed to gore beneath his heel. He’d started stocking their defences well before Jonah had made the official call, a few extra canisters of CO2 in the documents room, corkscrews in a kitchen with no wine.

By the time the Corruption followed him home there’d been enough food and supplies at his apartment to last several months. The most difficult part of waiting out the assault was not being able to watch over Jon, to know he was eating and sleeping and remembering to leave the office every few hours to breathe. But as long as Prentiss was focused on Martin, Jon would be safe there. Even if Jon wasn’t acting like a functioning human adult, that was enough.

Jon was not safe anymore.

Knowing that Jon was the Archivist, destined for More, destined to be Undone and Remade, and seeing it playing out in front of him, Jon’s blood on the floor and on Martin’s hands, were very different experiences. He wasn’t sure it was possible to have properly planned for the reality of watching Jon suffer and knowing that there was no way to try and fix it.

Sasha pulled the corkscrew out and Jon cried out something that could have been Martin’s name, high and strung out, more whimper than word. Martin’s hands were steady on his body, holding him still and letting Jon leech away as much of Martin’s strength as he could spare.

He grabbed hold of one of his jumpers, tossed to the ground at some point during his extended stay, and wrapped the heavy knitted fabric tight around Jon’s leg.

The corkscrew clattered to the ground as Sasha shot up. “Tim,” she said, eyes darting over martin’s shoulder out the window to the main Archives. “Tim doesn’t know.”

“Sas–” Jon attempted to shift into a more upright position and doubled over with a groan for a moment before looking back at Sasha. “Sasha, you cannot go out there.”

“You can’t move. Someone needs to warm Tim and get help.”

“I–” Jon’s eyes caught his at the same time as his fingers dug into the fabric of Martin’s shirt, dragging the larger man closer. The panicked edge to his gaze said enough about who he would rather sacrifice between Martin and Sasha. “Okay. Be careful.”

Sasha let out a laugh that revealed the panic her face did not. She looked at Jon and then Martin fondly, like it might be the last time she ever saw them.

“Stay safe,” she said, and then, to Martin, “Take care of him.”

“Of course,” Martin replied. He held up the bloody corkscrew to her.

Sasha took it with a determined smile, opened the door and then was gone.

Jon’s body was a trembling, frail mass against his side as they sat together on the floor of document storage. His hand had slipped up the back of Martin’s shirt and his cold fingers tapped a pattern into his skin.

“Are you frightened, Martin?”

Jon’s palm pressed against his back and then quickly pulled away before repeating the action twice.

_Watching. Watching. Watching._

Jonah Magnus, eyes always open. Safe in his office upstairs as his Archivist bled through the jumper Martin had tied around the wound.

“Yes,” Martin replied. “Are you?”

Martin traced the things he wasn’t allowed to say into the beautiful, blemish-free skin of Jon’s arm. On his back, Jon’s fingers mirrored his. Gentle, repetitive motions, fingertips barely touching skin.

_Love you. Love you. Love you._

Jon’s voice was quiet, settling under his skin rather than bouncing across the room. “I don’t want to die. Not like this.”

“You won’t.”

Jon’s hands faltered against Martin’s back and the pattern changed.

_Coming. Coming. Comi-_

The wall they were facing shook, hairline fractures racing across the plaster. Martin leant up to glance back out the window behind them only to find that the glass was completely covered in worms. The wall shook again and Jon made a sound deep in the back of his throat, somewhere between fear and surprise as he reached out to press his fingers back to Martin’s skin.

Before he was able to tap out a pattern, the wall erupted.

Martin curled around Jon, ignoring the bits of plaster that bounced off his back and taking the moment to look at him. Jon’s eyes were blown wide-open and there was a smudge of what was likely his own blood across his cheek. He was the most beautiful thing Martin had ever seen.

As tempted as he was to curl even closer to Jon and block out the horrors that they both knew were coming, Martin turned to face whatever horror was already there.

The silhouette in the newly made hole coughed like a man who had inhaled too quickly and lost his breath somewhere between his mouth and his lungs. Dirt and plaster dust were rapidly settling across their face and body, catching in their otherwise well-styled hair.

“Tim?” Martin exclaimed.

Still half beneath him, Jon nodded in confirmation. “Tim.”

Tim sent them both a wide smile, teeth as white as the plaster dust in his hair.

“Do you reckon they just forgot to mention the potential for worm attacks when they hired us, because I would have loved a heads up,” Tim said, hurrying over and sliding an arm around Jon’s back.

“You’re okay.” Martin allowed Tim to help him lift Jon to his feet. “Did Sasha?”

Tim nodded, face set in that same determined expression Sasha had left with. “She found me. She went to get help, Elias or anyone else she can find.”

Martin caught Jon’s eye as Tim pulled them towards the hole he’d created. If Jonah wanted to stop the attack, he could have prevented it entirely. This was a test and there was nothing Sasha or anyone else could do to get him to put a stop to it until he’d gotten whatever he was hoping for.

“Where are we going?” Jon asked, squinting – whether in confusion or in pain, Martin couldn’t tell – into the endless dark beyond the hole.

“Tunnels. There’s a whole network under the Institute. No idea where they lead but anywhere’s gotta be better than here, right?”

No, not necessarily. Martin knew all about the tunnels, stretching all the way out to the old prison. You could get lost in there. Or worse, you could be found.

The tunnels were dark and musty, and Jon’s limp was worse than they’d expected. Tim was the only one of the three who had enough sense to bring along his phone, but the bright torchlight barely pierced a few metres ahead in the heavy darkness. Against his back, Jon pressed his closed fist gently to Martin’s skin three times.

Tim was saying something about the few worms left in the tunnels being quicker. A part of Martin’s brain took the information and stored it away for safe keeping, but the rest was occupied in breathing in the scent of Jon, still tucked into his side between Martin and Tim. He smelt of blood and worms and the damp, dusty tunnels, but he also smelt like Jon.

Safe from watching eyes, he pressed his face against the top of Jon’s head for a second, letting the silver strands of hair tickle his skin, and then pulled away. He gently shifted until Jon was relying solely on Tim’s strength.

At Jon’s questioning glance, he shook his head and hovered back. Taking the hint, Jon turned his full attention to Tim and started to lecture the man on the importance of documenting their experience.

Martin listened to Jon’s exhausted narration fade out of range. Every step felt like the twist of a corkscrew in his chest. When Jon and Tim were completely out of range, he turned around and headed in the opposite direction.

The new part of the tunnels was devoid of worms, but it was not empty. Martin had spent ten years of his life in the Magnus Institute. It was almost as much his domain as it was Jonah’s. With the light of Tim’s torch long faded, thousands of tiny eyes began to open in the blackness.

“He’ll survive,” Martin told the mass of spiders. “He’s strong, stronger than Elias expects him to be. His eyes are already half open. He’ll survive.”

Martin needed to believe it was true.

He had done all he could to prepare Jon for the Corruption. His job now was to make sure that his husband was prepared for everything that came next. The key to that was somewhere hidden in the tunnels, half decomposed with three bullets lodged in her chest.

Martin had always been particularly good at hide and seek.


	2. The Paranoia

“Martin!” Jon called, voice loud in the quiet of the Archives.

He slammed open the door of his office and Martin flinched, the cup of boiling tea almost spilling out over his hands where he stood, almost directly outside Jon’s office. 

Jon stood, back perfectly straight but with his shirt misbuttoned and hair already half falling out of the neat bun he usually kept it in. Jon looked almost as startled as him for a moment, but then he blinked and it was gone. Martin gently held out the tea towards him with a small smile.

Jon snatched the cup from his hands seemingly without thinking and martin was surprised that the tea didn’t spill. He pointed into his office with a glare. “A word, Martin.”

Across the office, Tim sent Martin a sympathetic grimace and then a glare towards Jon’s back. Sasha looked up with a sigh and a comforting smile before continuing her work.

Jon slammed the door closed behind them and then placed the teacup down gently on the desk. He took a breath and Martin watched his shoulders lift and fall.

“If this is about the Kennedy statement, I haven’t been able to find out anything more about the Bromley house yet,” Martin said, taking a seat.

Jon turned around and leant back, his open palms pressed flat against the desk as he loomed over Martin’s seated form. “This is not about the Kennedy statement. This is about the fact that you have been lying to me for months, if not years.”

Martin blushed up to his ears and fumbled for his words. “I don’t understand,” he finally managed.

“You told me that Trevor Herbert was dead. Why?”

“Because he is?” Martin paused, confusion plain across his face. “Isn’t he?”

“Apparently not.”

“Oh. Oh, I swear I didn’t know. I overheard some of the guys from another department talking about him and they seemed pretty convinced that he had, you know, actually died. I, maybe I misheard or misunderstood?”

Jon began to pace the small space of his office, tugging his hair free from the half-ruined bun and waving his hands animatedly. “That’s not all, though, is it? You’ve been overly interested in everything I do and the things you say and do just don’t add up. You barely know how to properly file statements, your research comes from questionable sources at best, you left us alone in the tunnels and found Gertrude’s body, you-”

“I lied on my CV,” Martin squeaked out.

Jon stopped his pacing and turned to face him. “You what?”

“I don’t have a Masters in anything. I dropped out of high school to, to…”

“To what, Martin?” Jon snapped. Martin didn’t like the frantic glint in his eyes.

“My mum was sick, alright! I dropped out to help her and then the bills kept coming and nobody wanted a seventeen-year-old who didn’t even have a high school certificate, so I fudged some of the details on my CV and got hired here.”

“So, in the tunnels, when you wandered off…”

Martin’s blush deepened. “It wasn’t on _purpose_.”

“Right. Right, of course. Thank you, Martin.” Jon looked back towards his desk, shoulders slumped.

“So, I’m not fired, or?”

Jon laughed, the first bright sound since Martin had entered the office. “I think anyone who is willing to _follow me down into the tunnels_ has earnt the right to work here.”

.

The tunnels were as dark and musty as Martin remembered, the amount of shrivelled worm carcasses doubling and then tripling the further he travelled from the make-shift entrance. He could hear frantic footsteps echoing off the rough walls from further down the tunnel and only relaxed when Jon’s familiar muttering followed swiftly after. Martin crept down the passageway, silent on his feet despite his size and saw Jon before Jon saw him.

Jon was pacing in the dark, hands twisted up into his hair as he rambled. A large black spider was perched on the wall, eager to be an audience. Jon accidently pulled at his own hair as he moved to gesture something towards it.

“–shouldn’t have pushed him so far… We both know he’s sensitive about his mum. I just worry about him, you know? I– oh.”

Jon’s entire body stiffened as he spotted Martin standing near the opposite wall. The he was moving, quick, determined strides across the open space until he was close enough to loop his arms around Martin’s neck and drag him down into a hug. Martin wrapped his arms around Jon’s tiny waist and breathed him in.

Jon was rambling again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push you, I just needed to see you and I was so worried and I couldn’t think of another way, and–”

“Hey, hey.” He pulled away just enough to smooth Jon’s hair back from his forehead and pressed a kiss to the skin there. “Breathe, Love. I got your message; I’m not upset about the method of delivery. It was smart. Besides, He’d have expected you to find out I was a fraud eventually.”

Jon’s eyes were clear and focused when he looked at him, even in the pitch black of the tunnels. Martin had long since grown comfortable in his ability to exist in dark spaces, but for Jon it was a new development, coming in stages over the past few months from what little Jon had been able to tell him. Martin wasn’t sure when the sight had fully settled.

Perhaps the rapid maturity of Jon’s powers should have left him concerned, but Martin refused to see anything that gave Jon a better chance at survival as a negative.

“Now, what was so urgent?” Martin asked, leaning back against the wall and pulling Jon close to his side. The spider had crept closer and Martin stretched his hand out in welcome.

“I need you to leave the Institute.”

Martin almost crushed the spider climbing up his arm as he turned to face his husband in surprise. “Excuse me?”

“Quit, fake your death, whatever you need to do to make it convincing. You need to go.”

Martin ran the back of his finger along the spider’s furry body and sent Jon a concerned look. “I’m not leaving the Institute. You need me here.”

“I need you to be safe,” Jon insisted, voice breaking on the last word.

Martin wasn’t the one in danger, despite whatever fears had wriggled their way into Jon’s head with the worms. His webs were as formidable as the Dark or the Spiral or the Flesh. But if Jon didn’t come back to his senses soon…

Martin turned to face Jon, gripping his shoulders and pressing him back against the rock wall. “Listen to me. You need to drop all of this, the stalking and the obsessing and the questioning. Tim didn’t kill Gertrude Robinson. We both know who did.”

Even in the dark spaces between their bodies, neither man dared say the name out loud, not so close to the Institute.

Jon’s eyes were wild when they met his. “But he could be aligned with another entity, he could be an avatar, an enemy to the eye. He could still be a threat and I need to _Know_.”

The spider crawled up Martin’s neck, half of its furry legs settling across Martin’s cheek as he looked down at the mess of a man in his hands. “He could be, but Jon, _so am I_.”

Jon’s hands shot up to cover Martin’s, fingernails digging into his skin. “But he could be a threat to you.”

Jon’s breathing had picked up and his eyes darted over Martin’s shoulder to look out into the darkness as if he expected something to reach out and snatch Martin from his grip. Panic was already beginning to fog over his eyes and his entire body seemed to thrum with energy.

Martin leant down and kissed Jon into the wall. He let the steady weight of his own body settle over Jon’s and hoped it would be enough to ground him. Jon made a desperate, lost sound into his mouth and twisted his hands in Martin’s hair, pulling him closer still.

The spider skittered off of Martin’s face and down Jon’s arm to return to the wall and escape the dangers of searching hands. If Jon noticed, he ignored it in favour of opening Martin’s mouth and slipping his tongue in, kissing him back with a fever that did little to comfort the taller man.

But Jon’s breathing was steadying in the space of their shared breaths and Martin could feel the frantic beating of his heart slowing against their pressed chests.

Martin pulled away and pressed their foreheads together. “I am going to be fine.”

Jon hummed a noise of disbelief.

“I am. You know that I can handle it, even if Tim turns out to be aligned with the Buried or the Stranger or whoever. But you need to trust me, do you?”

“Yes,” Jon whispered. “Of course.”

“Good. You need to back off about Gertrude’s murder. Can you at least try to do that, for me?”

“I… I’ll try.”

If Jon didn’t let go of the paranoia poisoning his mind, Martin feared that the next body he found in the tunnels would be his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers can have a little bit of Jon worrying, as a treat.


	3. The Kidnapping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jon gets kidnapped way too frequently so, to clarify, this is set during the Circus kidnapping in season 3.

The office of Jonah Magnus was not a place Martin frequented. The cream walls and spotless, white desk felt too much like a mix between hospital corridors and doll’s furniture. It was a place of over-exposure, no dark corners to hide in.

Usually he managed to avoid the little plastic room and the unblinking, overly pleasant smile of its occupant, but Jonathan Sims had been missing for just under two weeks and Martin had decided it had been long enough to reasonably ask where the Archivist had gone.

“Martin,” Jonah said, Elias Bouchard’s face stretching open in a smile. “What can I do for you today? The statements haven’t been causing you too much trouble, I hope.”

“Jon hasn’t been into work in nearly two weeks and, well you must have noticed, with your, your all-seeing eye or whatever and…” Martin closed his eyes and took a breath to steady his heart and gather his thoughts for a moment. “I just need to know where he is, if he’s okay.”

When he opened his eyes Jonah’s face was impassive as usual, but there were creases in his button down and his hair was already slipping from its stying.

“I’m afraid I cannot tell you where our dear Archivist is at the moment.”

Martin watched Jonah’s steady smile begin to slip at the corners. In the brightly lit room, Martin wasn’t the only one stripped bare of his defences.

“You don’t know where he is, do you?”

Jonah didn’t flinch so much as twitch, his joined hands against the table making the most minuscule of involuntary movements. His smile was sickly sweet, curling up at the edges like a predator baring its teeth.

“I assure you, Jonathan can take care of himself.”

A snort snuck out of Martin’s mouth but quickly twisted into a sharp bout of hopeless, frantic laughter. “Jon? The man almost got eaten by worms. What if he’s in real trouble and needs our help? How can you not know where he is?”

Jonah leant back in his chair, straightening his spine in what could have been an attempt to look down at Martin if not for the fact that Martin had a solid five inches on him. “I have never claimed to be omniscient.”

Martin could feel Jon’s presence the same way one might feel a cobweb that had clung to their back and then was brushed away. It was an itching, creeping feeling of knowing that nothing is there but still not expecting to reach back and feel only air and your own skin.

But under that, under the discomfort and the worry, he could almost hear Jon’s heartbeat, like an echo of his own. Jon was never truly out of reach, not for him.

It was a strange sensation, knowing something that Jonah Magnus did not. It was its own brand of satisfying. But it was not as satisfying as having Jon safe by his side.

“You would know if he, if he died, right?” Martin asked, already knowing the answer, wondering how it must have felt for Jonah to kill Gertrude Robinson, as interwoven as they were.

“I would feel it, yes.” Jonah shifted in his seat, leaning forward to meet Martin’s gaze with the sort of wise glint in his eye that usually preceded unrequested guidance. “There are some things that we must allow Jon to experience on his own. Think of it as an opportunity for him to grow.”

Martin pulled away. He thought of Jon during the Infestation, afraid and in pain, admitting that he didn’t want to die. He thought of Jon, alone and on the run, whispering secrets to spiders and tape recorders in the dead of night as Martin was forced to smile politely at the man who had set him up.

Every time he lost Jon only half of the man came back.

There was only so much Jon had left to give away.

“But he’s not alone is he?” Martin snapped, voice gaining volume. “He hasn’t been alone for years, not since you decided to paint a target on his back. You marked him as bait and then dangled him over a hole in the ground to see which monsters would try to take a bite. And now one has and you’re in here, letting it have its fill and calling Jon’s suffering growth. Growing pains shouldn’t be fatal.”

“My, my, Martin. How bold you are when you need to be,” Jonah mused, eyes sharp.

Martin deflated, letting his body slump over in the chair and ducking his face into his palms. Tears gathered in his eyelashes and dribbled over across his cheeks. A sob crept out of his throat, loud and pathetic in the white room.

Across from him Jonah tutted and moved the tissue box closer to Martin, doing a decent mimicry of basic human kindness.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, voice wet and hoarse. “I shouldn’t have yelled. But Jon is, and I, it’s _Jon_. I need him to be okay.”

“I understand, Martin,” Jonah reassured him. “Matters of the heart are never easy, or so I hear.”

.

Martin’s face was dry as he approached the house. It was an old Victorian home, ancient and decaying and covered, every last inch, by webs. He opened the door, ignoring the ominous creak of the rusted hinges, and stepped inside.

Webs were crossed and interwoven across the space, some as thick as his forearm, some as paper-thin as baby hairs. Each clung to his skin, caressing and welcoming, as he slipped through, ducking beneath and stepping over and occasionally gently repositioning a strand or two.

At the very back of the house, he moved around a corner and almost stepped into a man-sized web. The webs were thickest there, opaque and as sharp as incisors.

Annabelle Cane’s black eyes peered out of the dark alongside thousands of her brethren.

Martin met her gaze steadily as he reached out and the webs parted for him, dragging him in, bringing him home.

“The Watcher has lost sight of their Archivist.”

Annabelle grinned, mouth too wide and too full of teeth. “The Spider has not.”

.

Across London, the Archivist breathed out a sigh of relief as upstairs the members of the Circus suddenly found that the webs covering the damp corners of their building were not as empty as they had believed.


	4. The Unknowing

“ _I need him to be okay_.”

Martin’s voice cracked, loud against the cold, uncaring walls of Document Storage. He paused the tape recorder and set it down on the mattress beside him. He would have liked to say that his fear was an act, just something to distract Jonah from looking too deeply, but he didn’t like lying to himself. Not anymore, not when it came to Jon.

Jon and Tim and Basira and Daisy were almost finished packing up the van and then… and then they would leave. 

He wanted to drag Jon into his arms and breathe him in and never let go. He wanted to take him into the tunnels and wrap him up in silver webs, like a thousand layers of bubble wrap. He wanted to feel the warm, eager pressure of Jon’s mouth against his, the edge of his teeth and the slip of his tongue. He wanted to tell his husband that he loved him.

He wanted to stop thinking that it might be the last time he ever got the chance.

Martin closed his eyes and held his breath before slowly letting it go. When he opened his eyes again, his hands were covered in webs.

There were dozens of individual strands interwoven together, some more complicated than others. He had spent months weaving them, plucking new strands when he needed them and cutting useless ones out until he was certain that it felt right.

Weaving was as much about emotion as it was about cunning.

This was one of the most ambitious webs he had strung, carefully crafting it to cover both the Stranger and the Eye. He needed to play his part perfectly, so that his true role was hidden from prying Eyes.

Webs weren’t visible to others like they were to him and his peers, but if one were to look close enough, it was possible to notice the fraying ends of the strands. He gently stoked a fingertip along a delicate silver strand and hoped he’d done enough to keep it strong and secure.

The web of threads in his hands shifted as the one he touched was pulled taut, and Martin’s heart stuttered and lurched forward on the other end. He sat up straighter, already searching out ways that his plan could have gone wrong, but it was too early, Jon hadn’t even left yet and–

Jon was standing in the doorway. His face was flushed but determined, as if whatever had drawn him to Martin had forced him to run.

“Jon, what?” Martin asked, blinking away his webs and moving to stand from the cot.

“I could Hear you overthinking from the van,” Jon snapped, as he strode across the room and pushed him back down. 

Jon settled in his lap, knees pressed into the cot mattress on either side of Martin’s hips in a way that gave him the height advantage for once. Jon’s hands found their way into his hair, twisting through the short curls in a way that sent shivers along Martin’s spine.

“Elias?” Martin asked, even as his hands ducked under Jon’s shirt to spread across the inviting skin of his back.

Jon used his grip in Martin’s hair to tilt his face up. “He has more important things to Watch right now.”

“But,” Martin protested, leaning into Jon’s touch like a moth right before the strike of the bug-zapper. “He could…”

“There is nothing that Elias Bouchard could do right now to stop me from giving my husband a proper goodbye.”

Jon’s mouth was warm and insistent against his, opening him up and slipping his tongue in like he was worried it was the last time he would get the chance. Martin’s head emptied, save for the sensation of Jon’s body pressed against his and the knowledge that Martin loved this man and would do anything to keep him.

Jon kissed him greedily, tugging his lip in between his teeth and biting down in a way that had Martin arching closer. He slid his hands up Jon’s back, feeling the warmth of his skin, the slippery spots of scar tissue. When he removed his hands from the back of Jon’s shirt the smaller man let out a whine, the vibrations travelling through Martin’s bitten lip.

He reached up and made quick work of undoing the tie holding Jon’s hair in a messy bun at the back of his skull. His hair fell down around them like a cocoon, encasing them and cutting them off from the outside world.

Jon let out a familiar, amused huff, but he’d still grown his hair out when Martin had told him he liked it. And, God, Martin loved Jon’s hair. People said that it made him look old and tired, but it was like spider silk between Martin’s fingers.

He twisted his fingers in the long tresses and pulled Jon closer to slide his tongue into his Husband’s mouth. Jon groaned and shifted his knees on the mattress so he could tilt Martin’s face up further and deepen the kiss. The way Jon was half sitting in his lap, half hovering over him meant that for once it was Martin who was straining up to reach.

Martin didn’t mind, not when it meant he was free to run his fingers through Jon’s hair and along his sides, content in the knowledge that Jon was there, real and alive and safe with him for the moment.

There was a lot that Martin would be willing to sacrifice to let Jon keep kissing him like that, fierce and erratic and desperate and hungry.

It was, Martin presumed, a little what having your Statement taken would be like. Intense and overwhelming, like you were being ripped apart from the inside and woven back together the way Jon Saw you. He leant into it willingly.

His plan would work. It needed to work.

Even if the others had given Martin a look when he’s first laid it out to them, something halfway between pity and humour, like an adult listening to a child explain their plan to travel to the moon or turn into a sunflower.

Jon hadn’t hesitated to declare that he believed in Martin and the others had reluctantly followed along. Now they were stacking blocks of explosives in the back of a van in the dark and Martin was stuck overthinking about what that type of firepower could do to the anatomy of a human body caught in the crossfire.

“Martin,” Jon sighed into his mouth, settling down to rest on his lap. “I didn’t come here to listen to your thoughts spiral out of control.”

“I, sorry. Sorry. I just, worry.”

“I trust you.” Jon leant back enough to push Martin’s curls away from his face. “You’re so smart, Martin. God, sometimes I can’t even believe you’re real.”

Jon’s eyes on him, like he was trying to memorise every one of Martin’s freckles, made him feel almost painfully Seen. So many of his webs were woven in the dark, unnoticed. They were designed that way because Martin was good at what he did, but Jon’s eyes on him, Seeing him, Knowing him, burned in a way that he never wanted to forget.

Somewhere, through the Archives and up the steps to the Institute foyer, Martin heard the babble of familiar voices. Tim’s laugh echoed down to them and Martin wished that it didn’t sound so irreparably broken.

“The van will be leaving soon,” Martin reminded him, the knowledge rotten against his tongue.

“I know, I just… I didn’t want the last time you told me you loved me to be via tape.”

Martin stiffened, half angry and half heart-broken at the grief lacing Jon’s words. Like Martin was a ghost he’d already lost. But, hadn’t Martin been thinking the same thing not long before Jon found him?

Oh. _Oh_. Jon had said he’d Heard him overthinking.

He indulged them both and pulled Jon closer. Jon shivered as Martin brushed a kiss against the shell of his ear.

“I love you, Jonathan Blackwood-Sims,” Martin whispered, like a secret, like something fragile and important.

Like a Statement.

Jon pressed his forehead to Martin’s, the pressure almost painful, like he was trying to force his thoughts into Martin’s mind. As if he needed Martin to _Know_. 

Martin Knew.

By his side, Martin’s tape clicked on and continued recording.

“Just… just don’t _die_ , Jon,” he pleaded.

Jon kissed him again, a barely-there thing, a whisper of a kiss.

When Martin opened his eyes, Jon and the tape were gone.

Jon used to kiss him like that every morning, sleep still crusted in the corners of his eyes and lingering on his breath. He would wake up and kiss Martin, like he needed the gentle reminder that he could, that they were real.

Jon would make it back alive. Even if it meant Tim and Basira and Daisy were blown to pulp in the process.

Even if Martin had to pull the trigger himself.

Jon would make it home.


	5. The Coma

Grief was quiet.

Seeing Jon in a hospital bed, not alive, not dead, hadn’t been a revelation. There had been no screams, no sudden quaking of Martin’s world. It was just, quiet.

Jon was unmoving on the bed, as he’d been for the previous three months. Martin kept waiting for his chest to move. He missed Jon’s eyes, warm golden-brown with thick curling lashes. He missed the way Jon could look at him, even if his mouth was ridiculing him, and tell him that he loved him with just the longing, fond glint of gold in his irises.

Martin sat down in the familiar stiff plastic chair by Jon’s bed and gently curled his fingers around Jon’s. Jon’s hand was cold, not like a corpse, just like he needed to shake it to get the blood running back to his fingertips. Martin rubbed it for him and threaded their fingers together. Their hands still fit together perfectly.

Which was a ridiculous thought because obviously they did, they were the same hands as they’d always been. Jon’s was more scarred than originally, but it was still his.

Aside from the stillness, Jon hadn’t physically changed at all. Sure, his hair was a little longer, stretching down to almost brush his waist, but it had already been headed that way before. It wasn’t as if Martin had arrived one day to find a different person in Jon’s place.

Martin brought their joined hands to his mouth and brushed a kiss to Jon’s knuckles before settling down against the back of the chair.

“Hello, Jon,” Martin said, just barely more than a whisper.

They were facing the same direction, at almost the same height. He could almost imagine it were like any other morning, the two of them still lazing around in bed, hands together as they spoke about the day ahead.

But they hadn’t done that in years, not since before Jon had been promoted to Archivist. Everything had been easier back then.

He reached over with his spare hand and gently tucked Jon’s hair back into place behind his ear. He would need to braid it again for him at some point. The nurses pulled on it by accident sometimes when they moved him for check-ups or bathing.

“Basira asked me to come to lunch yesterday. I, she was tired. Said we could make a proper trip of it, invite Daisy and you and… and Tim.” Martin sighed and tried to fold his legs up under him on the uncomfortable seat. “The look on her face when she realised, when she remembered, I think it hurt more than the reminder.”

If Martin focused, he could see the tangled webs he’d woven over the years working at the Institute.

Jon’s strand still shone the brightest, liquid starlight at the centre of the web, even as it lay limp and silent. Every other thread was interwoven with his. Martin’s heart beat rapidly on the other end, trying hopelessly to pump life into the quiet.

Daisy’s strand was dull where it intertwined with Basira’s, dark and cold. Martin ran his fingers along it and hot, animal fear raced up his spine. He tugged it closer to Jon’s central strand, pulling Basira’s along with it, never far behind. She would need the support when she returned. He’d reminded Basira yesterday that they hadn’t found her body. He wasn’t sure how willing she’d been to believe him. Hope was a dangerous thing.

There was no limp or dark strand interwoven into the web that belonged to Tim. It had been fraying for a long time. It had been simple, really, to tug on it a little too hard. When his strand snapped, it had fallen out, pulling the remaining strands closer together. Strengthening the web.

Jon had asked about his webs once, almost a decade ago, wondering why he couldn’t just cut Jonah’s thread. Martin had described cutting someone’s thread as a sort of trust fall. As long as they were woven into his web, he was keeping them within arm’s reach; snipping their thread was equivalent to taking a step back.

It didn’t always mean something bad, some people were perfectly capable of finding their balance again on their own.

Others were not.

It was a terrible sort of irony really. Tim had been so lost in getting his revenge on the Stranger that he’d failed to recognise their embrace until he was half mad with it. If he’d given in, it might have saved him. At the very least, the Stranger would have been happy to pick up the pieces.

“Not,” Martin continued, pushing Tim’s face to the back of his mind where the dark would dull the ache, “that you would have come to lunch even if you could have, right Jon? You were always such a workaholic, even before the fate of the world was placed on your shoulders.”

He let out a laugh, letting the memory of Jon at his desk, visibly distraught at Gertrude Robinson’s utter lack of organisation, linger for a moment.

The sound died off too soon in the still hospital room. With the door closed, Martin didn’t even have the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor to break the silence.

Because Jon didn’t have a heartbeat. He should be dead. In a way, he was.

Martin remembered his own death in vivid detail. Too many legs, moving over his body, becoming his body, shedding his skin to reveal the smooth, new skin beneath.

It wasn’t really something a person forgot.

He had been out for a week. When he’d awoken, Annabelle had been there to hold his hands. All of them.

Jon had been gone for much longer than that. Martin was trying not to worry. He wasn’t really succeeding.

Jon knew what he was getting into, he knew what Becoming involved. It was still a difficult decision, the most difficult decision he’d ever had to make. Martin wouldn’t hate him if he changed his mind and just let go.

But he was selfish, he wanted Jon there with him.

He’d made a lot of choices to ensure that was possible.

He ran his fingers over the back of Jon’s hand. The skin was discoloured by pale silver scar tissue from the infestation. Deep red marks that always ran a little too warm curled around the sides, stretching out from his burnt palm.

Martin traced over the space where Jon’s ring finger met his knuckles. Somehow, through all the assaults to his body the space was mostly clear. There was blistered scar tissue on the underside, but the majority had been focused on his palm, and the top of his hand showed only smooth brown skin where his wedding ring once sat.

Some days Martin wished that there was a pale band of skin there, bodily proof that their life together was real, but the ring had never been on Jon’s finger long enough to leave a mark.

If one didn’t know what they were looking for, they might assume that Martin had no lasting marks on Jon’s body, nothing to prove he had been there at all.

He gently placed Jon’s hand back on the bed and rose from his seat.

“I hope you wake up soon. I–” Martin sighed. “Goodbye, Jon.”

He glanced back at Jon’s form, still pointlessly searching for a sign of life, and then left the room for the last time. He could feel the numb pull of Loneliness creeping across his webs.

But Loneliness was a useful tool, if you knew how to properly utilise it.


	6. The Lonely

Even before his death, Jon Knew things.

He could look at a pile of statements and Know which, if any, were true. He Knew when someone had a story hidden inside them and how to get it out. He Knew that his husband always had a plan.

Jon was curled into himself at his desk, arms around his knees and head resting on top. Through the closed door he could hear Basira and Melanie’s voices softly filtering through from the assistants’ desks. He Knew that they were talking about him, worried and confused by what he was now. He Knew that Daisy was upstairs bullying a cafeteria worker into slipping her a free coffee for him.

He… he did not Know where Martin was.

There was a high chance that he was in the Institute, maybe only a few hundred meters away, but Jon didn’t Know.

Through Prentis’ attack and Not!Sasha and Jonah’s set up and the Unknowing he had always had Martin. But now he _couldn’t find him_.

Martin had been beside him for so long. Slowly, he’d come to be a part of Jon.

It was like growing your hair out. You don’t really notice the lengthening, and the gradual weight, as your ponytail gets longer and heavier over time. Until, one day it’s cut off and you’re left with a pit in your stomach, your fingers lost, searching when they comb through your hair and come up short.

Jon kept reaching for that familiar cup of tea, tucked into the corner of his desk with the exact amount of sugar he enjoyed. He kept starting to call Martin’s name, asking for an update on a statement, just needing to see the way his freckles stood out against his flushed cheeks.

Upstairs, Daisy ripped open one too many sugar packets and poured them into the dark contents of the coffee she’d secured. In three minutes, she would be back in the Archives, slamming open his office door and demanding he drink it. The burnt coffee would taste like artificially sweetened mud and remain at the back of his throat for the rest of the day if he drank it.

Jon stood from the desk. The buttons of his shirt didn’t quite match up with the buttonholes and his hair was far too long for him to have neglected brushing it for as long as he had, falling out of the bun he’d pulled it into, but Basira and Melanie didn’t point any of that out when he walked into the main Archives.

They quieted down and looked up at him, Basira with the same concern that often lingered in Daisy’s eyes, Melanie with… something else. Suspicion, maybe. Resentment, Definitely.

“Jon,” Basira said getting to her feet with her hands up, like he was seconds away from going feral or breaking down. He wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t. “Is there something wrong?”

Jon’s voice cracked when he tried to speak, a dry husk of his usual bass, and he swallowed what meagre saliva was left in his mouth. He wasn’t sure when he’d last spoken to another person.

“I’m going out,” he said after a moment.

“Do you want company? I could tag along, might as well take the chance to stretch my–”

“No,” Jon cut in. And then, softer, “I, I ‘m okay, Basira. Thank you. I won’t be out long, just need some air.”

Basira sat back down with the crinkle between her eyes that had become an almost permanent addition since he and Daisy had returned from the coffin. “Okay. You have my number.”

“I do.” Jon sent her a tight-lipped smile and nodded at Melanie before walking out of the Archives.

He let his legs carry him up to the fire exit feeling the breath catch in his lungs as he took the stairs two at a time, almost running, needing to be somewhere, anywhere else. He wasn’t entirely sure where he ended up, somewhere between the fourth floor and the roof, leaning back against the cool concrete walls of the stairwell.

He closed his eyes and breathed in, feeling the air in his lungs, reminding himself that, if nothing else, he was still human enough for that.

A soft click travelled through the silent stairwell, followed by the faint scuffle of footsteps. They sounded so distant that it was more like an echo of a sound than anything else. The air in Jon’s lungs turned cold enough to burn.

When he opened his eyes, no one was in the space with him, but he Knew.

“Martin,” he whispered, reverent, like a prayer to a long dead God. “Please. _Please_.”

A silhouette flickered to life before him, pale and ashen, like a man made of smoke and lost things. He seemed to drift at the edges, a thought in a half-asleep mind, on the verge of being swept away by dreams.

Martin sighed, fogging up the stairwell, crystallising the breath in Jon’s lungs. “What do you want, Jon?”

Jon let out a hopeless laugh. “What I’ve always wanted. You.”

“Jon.” Martin sighed again. It felt like every time a little bit more of his realness slipped away.

“I know you think that you’re helping, taking on the burden of the Lonely so I don’t have to or, or something. But Martin, I don’t want you to. You know me, you do. You must know that I don’t want any of this if it’s not with you.” Jon wanted to grab onto Martin, to pull him closer and kiss some sense into him. He wanted to feel the warmth of Martin’s skin beneath his ruined hands and trace I love You’s into the space between them.

He was scared that if he tried, his fingers would pass through Martin entirely.

“You died, Jon. You were gone so long; I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”

“But I did,” Jon insisted.

“I grieved for you. But I couldn’t grieve forever.” Martin didn’t sound sad when he spoke. He didn’t really sound like anything, as if emotion was a level of existence that he didn’t have the energy for anymore.

“I’m alive. Martin, I’m _right here_.” Jon did step forward then, reaching both hands for Martin.

Martin moved out of reach. “It’s better this way. I’ve moved on. You should too.”

“It worked; Jonah can’t See us right now. We’re so close. You can’t,” Jon choked back the sob in his voice, “Please don’t leave me. Not when I’m so close to getting you back.”

Martin looked at him. His eyes were as white as the fog that had begun to rise up around him, obscuring both iris and pupil. “I really loved you,” he said.

Jon surged forward but his hands found only fog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be one more offical part to this series and then maybe a prequel fic if enough people want the backstory of this universe!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Essay Regarding the Over-Acting Of Jonathan Sims in 'The Weaver' by StarlightDreamer16](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23428690) by [WouldTheHill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WouldTheHill/pseuds/WouldTheHill)




End file.
